Scars
by LadyRoonilWazlib
Summary: "Are you not ashamed?" he asked."No. I have nothing to be ashamed of." A girl who wears her scars with pride, meets someone who understands her completely. This is how they meet. LB/CW


Don't own anything, this is just a pairing that I've recently discovered and think would be really good together. Lavendar isn't the same girl that we see in the books, she's had an experience that has changed her (for the better I hope) and this is my interpretation of it.

* * *

After 2 years, it still felt like yesterday.

She could still feel Greyback's teeth (no _fangs)_ sinking into her shoulder, as his dirty, yellow fingernails scraped down her back. He was clawing at her and his nails were digging into her flesh.

The rip of her robes and the acrid smell of his breath, hot and grotesque on her face was more than she could bear. She was paralysed in fear and the scream that was on the tip of her tongue, was swallowed as one of his hands came around her neck and choked the last remnants of air out of her.

The other hand came swiping around her front and the smell of her own blood was pungent in the air.

He was backing her into a wall now. It was cold and unyielding behind her and there was no means of escaping. She tried to scratch his face but could feel everything going dark around her and the screams and wails surrounding her were becoming quieter and quieter as he advanced on her.

"_NO!" _somebody had screamed but she had no idea who, and suddenly he was off her, someone had thrown a curse at him and he had flown halfway across the Great Hall before smashing into the marble banisters of the great staircase.

A glass ball crashed, with a sickening crunch on his head as he tried to rear up and he fell back down to the ground. Unmoving. His final torture of Lavender had been his last.

She collapsed and knew no more.

* * *

She woke up sweating and tangled between the rough sheets. And like every night before that, she felt completely and utterly alone.

Instead of wallowing in her nightmare, and its horrific familiarity, she rose from the bed and stood. Glancing at the clock, she saw it was only 11.

Early, really.

Her nightmares usually started at around 12 before waking her with the stench and screams of the battle raging around her.

Lavender swung her legs around and stood up. Making her way to the shower she chanced a glance at herself in the mirror.

Looking back at her was a young woman with thick, dark, curly hair that was currently stuck to her chest due to the exertion of her recent night terror. Pulling it back, the scars, as fresh as the day she got them, screamed for attention. They were red and angry-looking and covered her neck and chest. The vines of scar tissue weaved around her arms and hands. There were three huge gashes on the front, but the back was worse.

A mish-mash of raised tissue covered her back and shoulders almost like a spider's web.

Sighing, she pulled her hair up and slipped out of the shorts and singlet she had worn to bed. They were useless really as they did not allow for modesty. Her scars would never allow her to be modest again.

She stood in the shower and turned it onto the hottest setting. It burned her skin but instead of feeling pain, she felt relief. She scrubbed her body until it was pink and supple. It still wasn't enough.

She would never be clean again.

She turned off the spray and got out. She wrapped a towel around herself. It felt rough and coarse on her skin but it was nothing new. Everything felt harsh on her skin nowadays.

She went to the wardrobe at the end of the bed. Her favourite dress, called to her. Feeling delightfully morbid, she fingered the soft silk of it and before she could convince herself otherwise, she slipped it over her head.

A graduation gift, from the mother who died the day before the battle.

It was black, and made of silk with a sweetheart neckline. It hugged her like a cocoon and her scars were on display for anyone to look should they want to.

She was not ashamed. They were her battle scars and she would wear them proudly for the world to see.

It was a small price to pay for being alive. Even if she did have a love for raw meat and fell ill around the time of the full moon, it was preferable to being a full-fledged werewolf.

Thank Merlin for small mercies.

She slipped into a comfortable pair of black flats and pulled her cloak around her shoulders. Taking her keys and a small purse full of coins she left the room without a backwards glance.

As she was enjoying the brisk walk and the cool, fresh breeze towards the Leaky Cauldron, she heard a group of men leaving a bar to her left.

They were Muggles. And they were drunk.

She saw them approaching her and as they passed, one of them wolf-whistled. In a previous time, she may have stopped them and asked to join them or perhaps hexed them for having no self-respect.

Instead she smiled and carried on walking. They couldn't possibly understand.

She saw the familiar sign at the door, and she pushed it open lightly. It was quiet and a slow jazz tune was playing from an old jukebox in the corner. She walked up to the bar and sat down.

Tom the barman came up to greet her.

"Evening Lavender" He said, and he gave her a warm smile that she returned as he reached for her cloak, to hang up.

"Good Evening Tom" She replied. She liked him. He never ogled at her. He looked certainly, she was positive she had seen him frowning at them a few times, but he never asked questions.

For that she was grateful. It was too painful to bring up the memories of the attack, to someone who genuinely cared.

She sat down at the bar, and Tom handed her a drink. She sniffed it and the smell of Firewhiskey hit her nose like a wrecking ball.

It was something she would never get used to, the acute sense of smell.

She sipped it slowly and looked around the quiet tavern. There were two women, seated in a far corner sipping tea and comparing purchases from earlier in the day.

There was a man and a woman, playing chess in front of the fire. They were deep in concentration and a bottle of the very same whiskey she herself was enjoying, sat between them.

There was _something _butshe wasn't sure what, it could be a hag, that sat alone, drinking from a goblet that was smoking slightly. The smell of rotten eggs clung to the creature and she looked away quickly before it noticed her staring.

At the end of the bar was a man with red hair.

He too, had scars going up and down his arms but unlike her, his looked old and healed. There were tattoos too, the ink twisting between the lines of raised flesh. His arms were muscular and he only wore a thin, black t-shirt. He didn't seem cold though and he lifted his glass of Firewhiskey to his mouth and swallowed. His neck was muscular too, and she saw a small earring in his left ear with a dragon on it.

She stared. It couldn't be Bill, no he was with his family. She had spoken with him a few times about her experience with the same wolf, and he had been supportive and sympathetic. She was happy for him that he had found love.

Something she was sure she would never find.

She was too damaged.

But Ron? He had had scars from his battle in the Department of Mysteries. It surely wasn't him.

Her cheeks flushed in embarrassment as she thought of the way she had acted in her sixth year at Hogwarts.

She was not that girl anymore. She was a young woman with different priorities and goals. She would never again be that carefree teenager whose only concerns were getting boys to like her and skipping Transfiguration class.

Now she had to worry about the entire Wizarding World to accept her. Even after the fall of He-who-must-not-be-named, the prejudice against Werewolves was still rife. She had a job with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, campaigning for werewolf rights but all the same, she had received many a letter saying she was a disgrace to werewolves and humans alike.

Belonging in neither category.

The man looked up at her suddenly and she didn't flush at being caught staring. On the contrary, their eyes met and neither looked away for some time. His eyes, she saw, were brown like hers used to be.

Now hers had gold flecks in them that often made people uncomfortable to make eye contact. As if she would suddenly attack them from where she stood.

The man stood up, and started to walk towards her. He looked familiar. He was definitely a Weasley, but one she hadn't met before.

He sat down beside her and smiled.

"I saw you staring at me." He wasn't angry. On the contrary, there was a hint of laughter in his voice.

"Did you see something you like?" He was flirting with her. Something that she hadn't experienced since before the battle. The concept was so foreign to her that she had to blink a few times in order to remember how it was done.

"Maybe." She smirked and took a sip of her own drink. He was staring at her now. His eyes were following the marred flesh on her hands, and moving towards her elbows and then shoulders. He gasped very quietly as she saw the hand marks around her neck and then he glanced over her back where some of the maze of tissue peeked out from behind her hair.

He looked away quickly mumbling in apology.

"It's okay. You can look if you want, it's not like I'm doing anything to hide them." She met his eyes again but he didn't glance away.

"I'm Charlie." He said, and his voice was gruff. He held out a hand to her and she saw it was calloused and covered in burn marks.

She clutched his rough one with her small one. The gash on her left palm met with a recent scab on his. The resulting feeling wasn't one of discomfort but one of understanding.

"You're a Weasley aren't you." He nodded.

"I'm Lavender Brown." She smiled again at him. He was very good looking. His hair was quite shaggy, and his skin was so freckled, he looked almost tan.

"I know." He said. And he returned her smile.

"You know my brother Bill, don't you?"

She nodded and took her hand back. He took a sip of his drink again and she saw, through the V-neck of his shirt, a claw mark. She stared at this, willing him to answer so she wouldn't have to ask.

Thankfully, he noticed because her unblinking gaze didn't falter when he put the glass down.

"Dragons." He said simply. "I'm a Dragon Keeper."

She breathed a sigh of relief. This handsome, and kind man didn't deserve to be savagely scarred against his will. At least his scars were by choice.

"Why?" She asked. She gestured at his muscled arms and chest.

"Why would you willingly scar yourself like this?" She wasn't accusing. She was genuinely curious.

"It's part of the job. You do what you have to do. And I love my job." He shrugged but didn't look away.

"How do you do it?" He asked. "Are you not ashamed?"

If it had been anyone else, she would have slapped them and left. But his tone was curious and his voice quiet. It wasn't dripping in pity but rather empathy, as if he knew the burden that she carried with her every day.

"No. I have nothing to be ashamed of." She pulled her hair up, and secured it with the pin in her hair.

He stared at her back, and his eyes raced back and forth, almost as if he was trying to find some kind of hidden path in the small cuts that littered her, previously smooth, back.

"I think you're amazing" He said simply.

She flushed and a younger more immature Lavender would have probably thrown herself at him. Instead, she stayed where she was and smiled coyly up at him.

She thought he was pretty amazing too but she didn't have the guts to say it. It was amazing to her that she could survive a savage werewolf attack but couldn't muster up the nerve to tell a boy (no, a _man_) that she liked him.

"Would you like to go for a walk with me?" He said, and he leaned in close to her.

She would have gladly kissed him there and then, but somehow she knew that he was looking for more from her. Besides, she hadn't even been with anyone since the battle.

Not that she'd had an entire slew of lovers at Hogwarts. She hardly counted her fumbling with Seamus on Christmas Eve, a real sexual encounter and regrettably she couldn't go back in time to change her decision.

She regretted a lot of things actually.

Men either thought she was ugly for being scarred or they thought she was something to be ogled at and that her scars were the only thing that defined her.

As if she was someone's pity case.

He held is hand out to her, and she grasped it, basking in its warmth. She had never met anyone whose skin was as warm as Charlie's.

She loved it because it contrasted perfectly with her own freezing cold skin.

They crossed the room and he turned around to grab her cloak, she inhaled deeply and the smell of cinnamon, cologne and _Charlie _surrounded her.

It was bliss.

She turned her back to him and allowed him to put her cloak around her shoulders. He hesitated, and she knew he was looking at her marred flesh again, before lightly placing the fabric over here.

"No cloak?" She asked and he smiled at her, and his whole face lit up. It was really rather wonderful she thought.

"No, I'm used to the cold. I usually work in Romania but I'm visiting my family at the moment. Britain is quite warm compared to Europe I've noticed." He held out his arm and she grasped his muscular forearm.

She looked down at where her hand was situated and she saw it was lying over a quote. She shifted her fingers slightly to read it.

"_It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.__"_

She looked up at his face. He was watching her, as if daring her to scoff or laugh.

"That's beautiful" She whispered. And she meant it.

They were strolling through Diagon Alley now, and the air was crisp and chilly. Their bodies were very close together and she felt his warmth radiating into her. She basked in it for she had never been this close to another person since before the battle.

"It's for my brother" He said. And his voice was husky and deep. "He died in the battle, but it's what he would have wanted. If he had to go, it would have been fighting."

"I'm so sorry Charlie." She bit her lip and he looked at her at the sound of his name.

"It's alright. He's the reason I'm here anyways. It was his birthday yesterday so I decided to come and see my family. His twin isn't taking it well. Even after all this time." He frowned and kept walking.

"When I was attacked..." She took a deep breath. She had never told this story to anyone. "I thought I was going to die. I nearly did. I was in this place, I didn't know where but it looked like Hogwarts. Except it was empty. And then people started walking in. Colin Creevey, Padma Patil and Professor Lupin and his wife, Tonks and even Professor Snape was there. And I saw your brother too, Fred."

Her breath hitched as she remembered it. It had been so clear at the time, and the memory of it had her shaking as if she had just woken up less than a minute ago.

He was staring at her now. And she fell into his strong arms, willingly. His hands caressed her back softly and her eyes met his and they were shining with tears as she remembered.

"But it was like they were on one side of a glass wall. And I couldn't see or feel it but I tried to follow them, or at least move past the invisible barrier but I couldn't. They were all staring at me as if they wanted me to come over but the barrier just wouldn't let me through."

She was sobbing now. The memory of her old teachers, her old friend's twin and Charlie's younger brother, she could tell they wanted her to join them.

"And then, all I could feel was pain. And it was slipping away from me and then everything else became clearer and I was in St. Mungo's and everyone was so happy I was alive."

"I didn't even need to ask. I knew they had died. And I was so close."

She shuddered as she remembered the anger she had felt at herself. She could have died, and nobody would have even noticed. She could have died and she wouldn't have been forced to live with her scars every day. She could have died, holding onto hope.

Charlie caressed her face, and brushed away tears with his calloused thumb. They were standing outside her apartment building now and she hadn't even noticed her feet carrying them there.

"I'm sorry." She mumbled, and sniffed loudly. She knew she didn't need to feel embarrassed. Charlie understood. He had wanted to know and what was more, she had wanted to tell him.

"Don't be." Their eyes met and her stomach felt light and fluttery, as if she had butterflies in it. It was a feeling she was completely unfamiliar with.

He leaned in, and she stood slightly on her tip-toes to meet him. Their lips connected slightly, and where hers where cold, his were warm. It wasn't wet or blustering like with Ron. It wasn't rough and painful like with Seamus.

It was gentle and caring and said things neither had to speak out loud.

His arm was long enough to reach around her entire body, and he lightly caressed her neck where Greyback had tried to strangle her.

She gripped onto him with one arm and with her other hand brought it up to the V of skin, exposed beneath his shirt. She felt a very light smattering of chest hair and she lightly touched the gash from the dragon's claw. It matched hers.

"Come with me" She whispered when they broke apart.

"Come upstairs with me." It wasn't an order but it didn't leave room for negotiation.

Not that he wanted to.

They fell into her bedroom, and she whispered a spell to lock the door.

The kiss became more urgent, tongues exploring each other's mouths as he pulled them on to the bed. Her cloak lay forgotten on the floor, and his fingers danced across the marred skin of her back.

"You are so beautiful." He said, and his voice was husky and deep.

She believed him, and when she woke up, entangled in his warm, strong arms, Lavender Brown, for the first time since the Battle of Hogwarts, didn't feel lonely anymore.


End file.
